Good Work!

Most people do good works to get God to accept them.  This assumption is rarely spoken.  It's more like a sneaking suspicion, "if God is really out there, and if I will be accountable to him someday, I better make sure I give money, or spend some of my time once in awhile helping a charitable organization.  The points I rack up can't hurt. The more I give, the more I do, the more assured I will be that I'm in, whatever that means."

The message of the Bible is radically different from this. Even in the Tanach, the first section comprising the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, written as a covenant to the Jews and all who attach themselves to the God of the Jews, works come after redemption, not before.

It was only after God demonstrated the supremacy of his power over the most formidable empire on the planet at the time, and freed his people from oppressive slavery, that he then gave them the ten commandments.  Their obedience was to be a faith response to his redemption.  "I am the Lord God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" is the preamble to the big ten.  "I am your God, you are my people, we are in covenant together, and I have worked a mighty salvation for you, therefore here is how you can demonstrate your appreciation for who I am and what I have done for you. "You shall have no other gods before me..."

So God's people obey because they have been saved, not to earn salvation, even in the Old Testament.

Good parents don't conditionalize acceptance of their kids on the basis of their performance.  They rejoice with their children when they obey and then reward them, and grief with them when they disobey and must discipline them, but their love and acceptance does not change.

No one is capable of living according to the perfect standards of the commandments anyway.  Everyone of us knows we could do more.  All of us know of times that we did our own thing and completely blew God off. If perfect obedience to God's standards becomes the criteria for his acceptance, we are doomed.


But the Bible declares something spectacularly wonderful. Here's just one example of where good works fits in Christianity: In one of the apostle Paul's letters he gives a command, but gives it in the context of God's previous saving work.  "Be tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you."   You are commanded not to be harsh, defensive, resentful and hold grudges, but instead be empathetic, open and forgiving, not to gain salvation, but because God in Christ has been tenderhearted and forgiving to you already.


This is indeed good news.

How Could this be Loving?

Our love is too mushy, too accommodating. Look how Jesus responds when confronted to explain a brutal military crackdown on a recent uprising. Government operatives had quelled the insurgents by actually killing some of them in as they were worshiping at the temple, their blood actually mingling with the blood of their sacrificial animals. 

And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

As if that answer wasn't harsh enough, Jesus gives his own example, not of political terror, but natural disaster.


Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” 

Does this strike you as loving? We tend to think of catastrophe as something unfair that happens to innocent people.  Jesus reminds us here that because of our spiritual condition we all deserve immediate devastation. His double warning to "repent," that is, to change my mind, heart, vantage point, attitude, and direction, requires a reinterpretation of the events.  I must first confess to him that I am as deserving to be in the path of Japan's disasters or Kadafi's rockets as anybody else. But because these horrors didn't happen to me startles me back into a fresh appreciation of his patience, his willingness to forgive, restore and redeploy, AND THEN TO GO TO HIM.

As a natural born people pleaser, this account forces me to rethink what love must be willing to do. I must be willing to appear uncaring and even brutal if it means helping people realize their real peril and what to do about it.

What exonerates Jesus from the charge of being uncaring is his own willingness to suffer so for our sakes. His suffering shallows out ours and eventually brings it to an end. What exonerates us is our willingness to suffer in his name for those we love.  Give generously to disaster relief.